Andrew/WK

Those riffs that are used a lot in these songs, sound very major. What scale is that, or what notes in particular? cant seem to work it out

whoomit

C minor with a few passing notes really.

Andrew/WK

So a c minor scale?

food1010

Yeah it's actually not major at all.

It's essentially the blues scale (minor pentatonic with an added passing tone between the 4 and 5).

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Andrew/WK

what is a passing tone? if you don't mind explaining

liampje

It's not really the right term, it's called 'accidental'.
Accidentals are notes that don't actually belong to the key signature (or scale if you want to dumb it down a bit).
For example CDEFGAB is a C major scale, any note beside those are accidentals.
Any notes outside of the key signature of C minor is an accidental if you play a piece in C minor. So basically what he was referring to is a b5 or tritone, very common accidental in metal because of it's demonish sound.

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CarsonStevens

Yes and no.

A passing tone is a tone you use to go from one structural tone to the next in your melody. Structural tones form the backbone of your melody, and are usually "strong" intervals like the third and fifth degree of the scale. Passing tones are "weaker" tones like the second and the fourth.

They aren't always accidentals, but if you use a note from outside the scale as a passing tone, they can be.

That's how I learned it, anyway.

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liampje

Yes, but in metal it doesn't function like a passing tone mostly.

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Hail

like most metal, it's just really, really cheesy

try and put on corpse paint to really set the atmosphere if you want to write riffs like this

also steal as much as possible from pantera and tbdm

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food1010

True. In the context of the blues scale it is considered a passing tone though.

Well, chromatic passing tone would probably be more accurate.

Really though, whether it's functioning as a passing tone, neighbor tone, or chromatic extension/alteration is irrelevant because it could be any of them.

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Morphogenesis26

Why TBDM? Who the hell steals from them?

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ouchies

I hear the blues scale, harmonic minor and diminished within the first 1:30. Its very easy writing music like this once you have a reasonable degree of control of these scales.

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